Current trends in the computer industry are leading to increasingly distributed systems. Computer users may now have access to a variety of computer platforms in a given day. For example, many computer users have a desktop computer for home use. Some users may also have a laptop computer for use at school or work. Additionally, some users may have access to tablet computers for mobile computing. Additionally, a computer user may have access to a mobile computing device, such as a smartphone with mobile computing capabilities. It is quite common that a computer user would own several of these devices for home or personal use.
In addition, it is common for a computer user to access a whole different set of computing devices at school or work. Each set of computing devices may have access to different networks. For example, the user's personal devices may have access to his home or public network, but not to his work network. Similarly, school networks may be secured, and restrict access to personal devices. Unfortunately, the computer user is often restricted from taking computing devices from work or school to his home. Therefore, the computer user may have access to several computing devices during a single day, but those computing devices may not be easily transportable or accessible outside of a given network. Thus, a computer user's computing experience may be fragmented or compartmentalized based on their current location.
Discrete access to computing devices, files, folders, and applications can be a disadvantage. For example, many computer users wish to access work documents and applications at home. Similarly, computer users often wish to access home files, such as music and other media files, while at work. In a culture where the lines between home and work are often blurred, it is a disadvantage to have discrete access to computing resources.
Computer users may also wish to collaborate with others to jointly develop a project. For example, co-workers may wish to collaborate on a document or presentation. Software development teams may wish to collaborate to develop software code and applications. Many other examples exist. It can be difficult to collaborate with a co-worker, particularly when the co-worker is located in a remote office or location. Collaboration is further complicated when document security is a concern.
In the past, computer users have often transported files and folders between computing devices using storage disks, such as flash memory drives, floppy disks, portable hard drive devices, etc. Portable data storage may not be optimal because some storage devices may be incompatible with some computing devices, portable storage devices may become lost or broken, and many companies are restricting access to foreign data storage devices for security protection.
Cloud resources have recently developed as a viable solution, thus computer systems are becoming more distributed. For example, a cloud resource could include cloud storage for storing data files and folders, cloud servers for hosting cloud-based applications, cloud access to peripheral resources such as computers and scanners, and other cloud-based objects, both hardware and software. Security is a concern for cloud resources, and consequently, a computer user's actions on a cloud resource are typically tracked and logged.